h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can I use images to support an entry and if not directly, can I cross reference them by putting them on the art site or giving an URL?

Also are Innovations considered relevant posting material as I have come up with ideas for making carrying rucksacks easier, plus other suggestions in various fields (posted material to your office for you to check out, if in any doubt as to what I mean)

Do philosophic insights count as entries? For instance liking OCD to a mild form of prejudice i.e. fear of contagion.

I'm sure an editor will be along shortly to anwer those.

While we wait, my answers would be:

1. Yes, but don't use them to replace descriptive text, only to illustrate it. If you own the copyright to the image and are happy for the guide to use them, then you can e-mail them to the guide editors. I suggest you sort this out while the entry is in Peer Review - leave placeholders for the images initially.

2. Yes, you'll get away with innovation here, so long as it sounds like conventional wisdom (it's one area where we differ from Wikipedia)

3. Nothing wrong with a bit of insight, as far as I'm concerned, but try to anchor it in the real world. Not sure I understood your OCD example, though.


Icy

Great to see some enthusiasm here from new Researchers who want to write.

My answers agree with what Icy North has written. That yes, you are allowed images, however they have to be free from copyright – ideally your own work – and even so will not show immediately until the entry is approved, you can send in photos and/or artwork when the entry has been selected from Peer Review.

Insight and innovation is also welcome. As a general rule, if you are writing predominantly objectively, then what you have written may well be suited for Peer Review and the Edited Guide, however if you wish to write predominantly subjectively and give opinions and personal insight, what you have written may well be better suited for h2g2's weekly online newspaper. There are exceptions, of course, there have been several successful entries that have approached serious topics from a personal perspective.

Until we know what you've written it is hard to say more, so my advice at the moment would be now that you've seen the guidelines is to write something in your own style and see what reception you get.

Hope that helps.

<BB<

Thanks. My work is free from copyright issues, even if not brilliantly executed. The only material not free from that problem is my montage art but half the fun of it is in recognizing where it came from as well as it's new setting and subtle twist on meaning. I am well aware of the Post and a poem of mine is apparently to be featured soon. As a venue, I had never thought of that as a spot for my wandering and wondering mind.

I had some interesting responses to my posts on an American science website - the scars are still visible

The reason you probably didn't understand what I was on about was because I was trying to link two ideas, not usually associated. I have a little bit of OCD and realized, after seeing the medical soap, Holby (my wife is a fan)that it isn't necessarily contagion people with this condition fear but contamination. You can't catch homosexuality, so therefore it must be a phobia of being either contaminated by or being converted to this way of life, that drives this urge to separate from and avoid. Likewise OCD is fear of this I believe (Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Some years back Channel 4 had a documentary about this that explained people's repulsion of something they couldn't properly categorize (i.e. neither fish nor fowl). We hate (fear) what we don't understand and exclude it but scientific curiosity by contrast, involves investigating this mystery: Like Einstein I believe that imagination is more important than knowledge and that mystery guides us into new spheres of endeavour and exploration, where knowledge is just the comfort zone we hide behind of certainty and this is just another name for prejudice ("Life is a metamorphosis that begins with risk" Anne Dufourmantelle). I hope that explains it to your satisfaction? If not pistols at dawn is the usual answer but I am not sure Dawn likes keep getting shot at.

I think you're on very dangerous ground analyzing causes of homosexuality. I'm a fan of free thought in all things, but (assuming your goodwill) there are ideas which may be just too difficult to articulate in a world in which the groundswell of opinion is towards acceptability and equality.

Homosexuality was just an example that people are familiar with and might describe why people have difficulty with this inability to categorize things you are not properly familiar with. I for instance am probably on the autistic spectrum and have freaked people out with my behaviour and mere presence some times (avoiding eye contact or conversely staring into the bottom of their souls or so deep even their soles - terribly into puns, which may be a symptom and other inappropriate behaviour that I don't see / believe is inappropriate).

I didn't know LLoyd George but I did know Stephen Fry at King's Lynn college. He didn't freak me out because of his sexuality but apparently I freaked him out just being me as I heard him saying to friend when we were on opposite sides of the street in Cambridge 'Ignore that guy across the road as I don't want him to spot me.' Oh what it is to be a friend of the rich and famous (or not in my case).